With death and mourning there’s a counterbalance. Almost two completely different things – but similar.
Grief needs to be experienced, psychologically, metaphysically and energetically, it’s the transition of energies that come up and have to be released from the body. I think when we suppress grief it gets trapped in our body – and what we repress and suppress gets expressed in unhealthy ways.
You must grieve and you have to grieve. It’s a really healthy part of the process, and if you don’t you’re actually extending the grieving process because you won’t be fully transitioning into the next stage emotionally, energetically and psychologically.
I’ve experienced an unusual amount of death, and one of the things I’ve learned is, it’s a very important experience and the more we express grief, the more it’s released from us and then it can leave us. The more we hang onto it, the more we continue to experience it.
Whenever I go through any sort of pain, every now and then, I still cry. It’s rare, but I do. Would you agree that there’s nothing better than a good sob?
There’s so much relief that comes from it. If we hold that emotion back then we don’t get that feeling of complete relief.
The Counterbalance
The next thing I do is appreciate and focus on the gifts I’ve gained – the counterbalance.
We all experience loss – loss of companionship, loss of personality traits, loss of an energy… when we counterbalance that with the benefits of this person having been in our lives we can start asking ourselves, ‘What am I grateful for?’
And start thinking of all the gifts we received in that experience. Then you literally count your blessings. If you think of only the loss you miss out on understanding, and how much they brought to your life and what you have gained.
Death is a game of proximity, proximity to you.
The closer the person is to you, means the proximity to the nerve and the emotion is also closer; so more grief will come up and it will be harder to counterbalance that grief. This insight comes from my experiencing an unusual amount of death and grieving. Grief has its own path, its own timeline. You can never say, ‘Well, I’ll be finished with this on Friday’.
From losing others and from almost losing my own life several times, I’ve become a lot more present. The awareness of the present and that death as an outcome is guaranteed, none of us are getting out of this alive – none of us – death comes to us all.
We are all going to die, the only thing we don’t know is when. It could be today, tomorrow, or it could be in another 10, 20 or 50 years, depending on where you are on your journey.
The gifts of death and mourning
What I do know is, death is guaranteed and when you start experiencing death and mortality around you, it makes you more grateful for the time that you have and the time you have with others. For me, this is one of the greatest gifts of death.
Another incredible gift of death is, it increases our ability to embrace life. If you’re really interested you can read the Tibetan book of ‘Living and Dying’, it talks about embracing death as a concept so we can truly be free.
Some people live in fleeting states of fear, afraid they might hurt themselves, or in the extreme that they’re going to die. If you can confront and embrace the fact that you are going to get hurt, feel pain, and eventually you are going to die, then you can start to live a little bit more energetically, a little bit more outwardly, and you start to really experience everything life has to offer.
Most people tip toe their way through life trying to get to death safely. For me, when I get to death I want be there skinny and sideways, I want to be banged up, I want to make sure I’ve red lined this puppy to it’s limit and really lived and had the greatest experience I can.
The more gifts you can appreciate from experiencing a death, then the shorter the grieving process will be. The grieving process is required for the energy to be transmuted from the emotions that come up as a result of that connection being transformed.
It’s a transmutation, it’s alchemy, the greatest form of alchemy is death.
And now… I’m out there to red line it!
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Thanks Kerwin.
I too have experienced an incredible amount of grief, and to be honest I don’t think I handled it particularly well. just this week I have been unpicking some of the threads of one grief experience from nearly 30 years ago.
a lot of my friends live in third world countries. Death is much more common there. not as sanitised or hidden. it is much more in your face. and people are much more engaged in the experience, the remembering, the caring, and indeed the moving forward.
nowadays when I hear a friend’s family member has died I express my sincere wish that the departed had lived an inspirational life worth celebrating and that each death is a reminder to the living to Seize the Day and suck the marrow from life while we can.
thanks for this article
Wow incredible. Thank you for sharing that Mark really hope this article helps
I am very grateful for this article. I lost two close friends of mine this year. One of them was only 42 years old. He was gorgeous, he had a gorgeous girlfriend, he was part owner of a surf camp in Costa Rica, but he was addicted to opioids. In searching for something to help him get over his addictions, he smoked lbogaine, and his life ended. Our last conversation was of me obsessing about the man I was dating, while he’s telling me that they make you sign a release form saying you promise you’ll return to your earthly body which he told me that he really wouldn’t come back if the other side looks that wonderful.
I have a tremendous amount of shame and guilt for not hearing him on a deeper level. He was such a vibrant, silly, fun man; I couldn’t see the depth of his pain. When I found out he had died, I picked up the phone to call another close friend. His daughter answered the phone and I said, “No. please no.” and she said, “My father died yesterday in his sleep.” He was an older man with health issues, but he was so full of life and was in college to become a teacher. I also feel guilt and shame around his death because I realized almost all of our conversations were of me pouring my heart out to him over my man troubles. He had such great advice. But now I wish our conversations would have been about something different. Something he was interested in.
Instead of feeling inspired by the idea that “time is precious, and I should live out every moment to its fullest”, I went into a negative thinking mode for the past 3 months thinking, “They are both at peace now. They have nothing left to worry about, no more struggles. I want to be at peace.” Finally, I decided that I’d better just start living with all the passion I have. In 2007, I had a stroke at 36 years old due to multiple blood clots in my brain. One in every artery of my brain. Most likely, the blood clots were from being on the birth control pill for 20 years straight. I had wanted to be an actress, I had spent many years in acting school but I only went to two auditions and never got past my fears. When I was in the hospital, I asked the occupational therapist, “Does this mean that I will no longer be able to pursue my acting dreams?” She told me that I would “find new interests”. I was devastated. But I have recovered, and besides some memory issues, I have thrived. I went back to college and was in the Honor Society. I earned 2 A.A. degrees. My surgeons had told my family I would most likely be a “vegetable” after my surgery, but I’m definitely more of a fruitcake. ? I have everything I need inside of me to cash in what has always felt like my “winning lottery ticket”, nevertheless I continue to sabotage myself. I’m 48 years old, and I don’t have time to dick around anymore. Literally. I want to accelerate my growth so that I can enjoy the feeling of racing towards my fears instead of running away from them. I know full well that tomorrow is not promised. Each day, I am focusing my attention more on things that will inspire my evolution.
Thank you so much for all of your fantastic content. Your voice gets straight to the heart of issues, and I feel empowered listening/reading all of it. I’m changing the ways in which I have talked to myself all these years. I’m changing the way I perceive my life. I truly appreciate your content and the way it is guiding me. I am very touched by this article. Instead of torturing myself over thoughts about how I wasn’t a good enough friend to my close friends that passed away, I’m going to focus on the gratitude I have that we were part of each other’s lives. My young friend that died said so many beautiful things to me about how he saw me, and what I meant to him in his life during our last conversation. I was the one friend he had that gave him unconditional love, and he never was afraid I would judge him. My older friend that died had always spent our time together pointing out all of my good qualities, and encouraging me to feel more deserving of better people in my life. Thank you for shedding light on a way that I can shift my unhelpful thinking to positive thinking. ?
Wow Michelle…I’m so incredibly grateful for you sharing this piece of your life with me. I’m glad that this article really resonated with you so deeply and that you’re changing your perspectives on these experiences. Blessings, keep following the path.